Summarizing teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for more concise understanding. Upon reading a passage, summarizing helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate important details that support them. It is a technique that enables students to focus on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are worth noting and remembering.

In this lesson plan, students summarize a recently completed writing assignment using a haiku poem. Haiku are well-suited to this task becuase they force students to carefully consider the value of each word, since they are so strictly limited.

Students engage in a character study of the numerous figures created by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities. Students first compare and contrast several forms of communication: email, text message, and telephone. They then complete a character study chart that breaks down physical background, character traits, social status/background, unanswered questions about the character, and a final judgment about the character. Next, students will create text messages between numerous characters that show the relationship between the characters, their background, and plot points that they are involved in. The lesson concludes with students sharing their text messages and a discussion of the rationales behind their choices.

A teacher's guide to Aldous Huxley's, A Brave New World. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

A comprehensive teacher's guide to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

A teaching guide for Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Includes discussion questions, vocabulary, writing and discussion prompts and activities.

A teacher's guide to Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. Contains discussion questions, research and writing prompts and background information.

In this plan, students work with the poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," by Robert Frost to practice incorporating quotations into smooth prose. Students write a paragraph about the main idea of the poem using quotations from the text to back up their claims.

Six teaching ideas for F.Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby including research, writing, and collaborative assignments.

Six teaching ideas for F.Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby including research, writing, and collaborative assignments.

In this lesson, students view art and photographs, then attempt to capture the theme and tone of those works in writing. Students first discuss the art as a class before splitting into pairs to write a first draft of a story or poem that captures the feeling of the visual works.

This lesson provides a guide for instructors to assist students with vocabulary acquisition and usage. Included within the resource are directions for extending this lesson for usage with multiple videos and various vocabulary lists. A rubric for grading and directions for peer evaluation are also provided.

In this recurring lesson, students watch an artistic video clip and use the words in their current vocabulary lesson to process the content through several types of creative writing. This gives students a chance to write in a unique voice and to understand the meaning of their vocabulary words in a new context. They also have the opportunity to analyze their peers' use of the vocabulary when they read and discuss each other's stories.

This resource provides a lesson designed to provide students the opportunity to read, analyze, reflect through writing using the text There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury.

Students are invited to explore the cultural offerings around them "” from architecture to books, dance, fashion, film, food, music, theater, TV and video games "” and write reviews about what they experience. The New York Times models along with advice from current Times critics to help them through the process.

This lesson from the New York Times offers suggestions for making TheTimes a low-stress part of your classroom routine, followed by literacy strategies to help address the Standards before, during, and after reading Times content with your students.

Suggestions for making TheTimes a low-stress part of your classroom routine, followed by literacy strategies to help address the Standards before, during, and after reading Times content with your students.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes questions, discussion topics, comparison to other texts, and an author biography designed to aid students in exploring John Grisham's fast paced novel, A Time to Kill, with themes of prejudice, friendship, commitment, ideals, family values, father/daughter relationships, retribution, and justice.

This handout provides overviews and examples of how to use tone in business writing. This includes considering the audience and purpose for writing.

Students learn how warmer temperatures have impacted ice drift tourism on the northern coast of Hokkaido, Japan. They will then consider the ways a continued warming trend might impact other global tourist destinations in the future.